FAIRVIEW — The Fairview superintendent ordered a Lincoln School teacher to remove a poster created by her sixth-grade students after one Jewish staff member complained that the images were anti-Semitic and offensive.

The offended worker says the district at first refused her request to have the poster removed, while Fairview school officials maintain they took it down as soon as they became aware of the issue and analyzed it for themselves.

According to Fairview Superintendent Louis DeLisio, sixth grade students at Lincoln School last week broke into small groups and created posters based on readings from the historical fiction novel Number the Stars, which examines the atrocities of the Holocaust.

One of the posters––shown above––features a swastika interlocked with the Star of David, red droplets on the Israeli flag that appear to be blood, photographs of Jewish children with Xs through their faces, magazine cut-outs of a number of prohibited foods (like cupcakes and meats), and scenes from the Warsaw ghetto. The poster was displayed on a hallway wall near the classroom for four or five days. The school teaches children in grades 4-6.

An Orthodox Jewish staffer working in the district was aghast when she saw it on Monday. The poster lacked any written explanation as to what the students were trying to relay to viewers, nor were other context clues present, the worker said.

"It's highly offensive to anybody, especially someone who is Jewish and whose family members were survivors of the Holocaust," she told NJ.com.

(The staff member is not an employee of the Fairview Board of Education but frequently works in the district. She requested anonymity, fearing she would be targeted at work.)

The staff member said she approached the Lincoln School principal, Lea Turro, during a lunch period on Monday and was told that the poster would not be removed until Wednesday, when the class' curriculum was scheduled to change.

The staffer denies the district's claim that the novel Number the Stars was stapled near the poster for context.

DeLisio said he was unaware of any conversation between the principal and the staff member. He said he made the decision to have the poster taken down on Tuesday after speaking with the offended staff member, the classroom teacher, and having viewed the poster himself.

"The teacher said the students are in the process of writing essays on what they're depicting in the posters," DeLisio told NJ.com. "I said since the project is done, I'd like you to take down the posters, which she's doing today."

Turro did not respond to multiple requests for comment on Tuesday. Even if the Holocaust lesson were not scheduled to end Wednesday, DeLisio said he would have instructed the teacher to remove it as soon as he learned it had caused distress.

"I run across this every once in a while, where one sector of our population is offended, and we always try to compromise," he told NJ.com. "We're not trying to offend anyone... my true feeling is they (the students) did not have any ill-intention with this poster. They were trying to depict things that were prohibited during the Holocaust."

The classroom teacher, who is engaged to a Jewish man, was "very upset" after learning the poster had offended a staff member, and was simply trying to create a non-standard lesson that would resonate with students, DeLisio said.

He agreed that the hallway display could have provided a greater degree of context.

"I think it's a learning process for everyone," he said.

District officials have not received any other complaints regarding the poster, DeLisio said.